Discussion

What is the quintessential food of your town?

My hometown of Mobile, Alabama is famous for two seafood dishes that both originated at the same small seafood restaurant: fried crab claws and West Indies Salad (lump white crabmeat marinated in vinegar, salt, pepper and ice water then served with crackers or over steak).

I'm going to take a stab at this and say for Honolulu, Hawaii it is saimin and spam musubi. Now I can't say with absolute certainty they were created in Honolulu, but these are Hawaii food items and Honolulu has the largest population, hence my guess.

Saimin goes back to plantation immigrant days when Chinese style noodles (mein) married with Japanese soup (dashi) creating saimin. Sai can mean small in Chinese, so maybe it means small noodles, alluding to the dishes simplicity, noodles, soup and a few simple garnishes, green onions, fishcake and char siu (bbq roast pork).

Spam musubi, arose from Hawaii's love affair with spam, I think we eat the most per capita in the U.S. Sliced spam, usually fried and basted in teriyaki sauce, is placed on white rice, and wrapped in nori (dried seaweed). These are found everywhere, from lunch stands, supermarkets to 7-11 and are a popular snack item.

I think for Berlin it's a toss-up between Pfannkuchen aka "Berliner", a jam-filled donut; the "bulette", which is a meat patty that almost always includes bread, onions, and other fillers (it's notorious for that); and the döner. After all, it was invented here.

Rock shrimp. We're the only place they come from. Of course, you can't really but them in the markets any more because they export them all to folks around the country that can pay the ridiculous price for them.

We use to be known for our local blue crabs and oysters but the developers destroyed all the estuaries building McMansions on the water for all the northern retirees. That of course spawned the all you can eat and early bird buffets. Darden really makes a killing in the Land of the Walker.

I would have to say we are known for our southern pork bbq, whic h is slightly sour and tangy after being served with a vinegar and tomato dip or sauce. Cheerwine is a local drink and cakes or ice creams made with this soft drink are popular. Apple Uglies, which is a fried yeast dough with apple pieces added are also popular. I'm sure there are more, but this is what comes to mind right now.

Then there are some things that have historically been quintessentially New York that can still be had, but maybe aren't as ubiquitous as they had been in the city's past, like local mussels, clams and oysters. They're obviously not as plentiful as they once were, because of pollution, overharvesting, and straightening out of the coastline through landfill, but there are still clam and oyster beds around Long Island and off the New Jersey shore, and where they're abundant, they're eaten like meatloaf.